


watch you breathing (watch you breathing out)

by apricae



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Wild Space - Karen Miller
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Family Feels, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Whump, post-Zigoola
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:28:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25619650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apricae/pseuds/apricae
Summary: Obi-Wan returns from Wild Space, gravely injured.Anakin and Ahsoka can only watch.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 23
Kudos: 258





	watch you breathing (watch you breathing out)

Obi-Wan is hurt again, and Anakin is far from surprised. 

He treads the familiar path from the temple landing platform to the healing halls, half rolling his eyes – Obi-Wan’s gone and got himself into trouble again. It’s almost routine; Anakin will spend the next few hours playfully teasing Obi-Wan for his recklessness, reminding his old master that he’s just as bad as his former padawan. Obi-Wan will playfully smack him and scoff and say _it isn’t all that bad_ , even as master Che fusses around and proves him wrong. 

The familiarity of it all is almost comforting in this lull between battlefronts. It takes off some of the edge from sitting around, never knowing if or when the next attack will happen. 

Then the hair on the back of his neck stands up. 

He blinks away the sudden simmering unease that crawls up his arms, bringing his skin to goosebumps, as he follows the high-ceilinged hallways down–

Someone’s shouting. Snatches of words through an open door, raised voices, Anakin’s attention zeroing in on master Vokara Che’s sharp tones through it all. _He’s slipping. Keep up compressions. Forty seconds, counting! Stand back, clear!_

He stands in the doorway and watches, helpless, as the healers work to restart Obi-Wan’s heart.

The world tilts dangerously and blurs at the edges. _Clear!_

Something must happen, because one of the white-robed Jedi stands back, giving Anakin a glimpse of dirty, blood-soaked tunics, burnt fabric, a pale grime-stained hand on the edge of a cot. He sinks to his knees. 

Nobody seems to notice him at all.

  
  
  


Time smears into something distant and unmoving. Obi-Wan is breathing on his own. Anakin keeps staring at that bare arm on the clean white sheets, the bruises and the blackened dried blood on slackened fingers. 

“Skywalker, I need you to leave.”

He looks up, head full of cotton, mouth so dry he has to swallow twice before he can try to speak. 

“What happened?”

“In due time. He is in no state for visitors right now, I need you to-”

“No. I’m staying.”

Vokara Che’s mouth is pinched tight, her hands and the front of her tunic stained muddy red. Anakin meets her gaze evenly, not moving from his spot on the floor as the other healers mill around the room. He doesn’t think he could stand if he tried. 

“Very well, Skywalker.”

He can’t look at her anymore. His eyes keep sliding back to Obi-Wan’s hand, the fine bones standing out starkly beneath the skin, the freckles on his forearms still visible beneath the dust and blood. 

He’s bleeding through his bandages. 

He’s bleeding in the Force, bleeding out with every shallow, rasping breath. 

It hurts so much Anakin wants to cry. Instead he clenches his fists tight and tunes out the sound, refusing to hear it. Instead his head becomes full of smoke and white noise and that ugly crimson _need_ to hold someone, _something_ , accountable for hurting Obi-Wan. He still doesn’t know. He doesn’t know, and it’s ripping him apart in slow motion. 

“What _happened_ ,” he says again, voice cracking in his dry, tight throat.

“We don’t know,” says Vokara che after a moment. “He’s… Starved, to put it lightly. Dehydrated. Broken bones, internal bleeding, a severe burn, infection– I don’t know what he’s been through.”

“But?”

“But it isn’t the worst part,” she sighs. “When he arrived, there was… Some kind of pressure on his brain.” 

Anakin swallows again, unable to banish the sour taste of fear from his tongue. “And?”

“We had to put him under to ease it. The pressure is gone now, but his heart was giving out. I worried we would lose him.” The master of the healing halls gives a sigh, regarding him evenly. 

“Skywalker, you know that I cannot give you any promises. By that I mean: _I don’t know that he’ll wake up again_. We will have to wait and see in the next few hours.”

Anakin doesn’t know what he says to that. There are no words at all.

There’s nothing. 

  
  
  


Ahsoka arrives at some point. He keeps sitting beside the bed, holding onto Obi-Wan’s too-thin hand. He can’t make himself look at his face for long. Still dirty; he can’t be moved, and there wasn’t time to clean him up. Anakin tries, fetching a cloth from the cupboards, but his hands are stiff and trembling, fingers clumsy as he gently wipes the worst of it from those sunken, sallow cheeks. When his face is recognizable again he stands back and makes the mistake of looking at the scorched hole in Obi-Wan’s left trouser leg, sensing the damage there, images flashing in his mind. Dropping the cloth somewhere, he bolts for the ‘fresher, stomach turning itself inside out with horror. 

He splashes his face with cold water, scrubbing at his skin. He can hear Ahsoka crying somewhere outside, and he feels sick all over again with guilt. 

“Hey, Snips,” he says when he opens the door again, looking at her for the first time. She looks as sick as he feels, and doesn’t say anything – whatever words she wanted to say sticking inside her throat sharply. She’s staring at the floor with tear tracks on her cheeks. He aches. 

“Hey. Ahsoka. C’mere.” 

In truth, he doesn’t want to comfort her, doesn’t think he _can_ , but when she steps unsteadily closer he finds himself reaching out; he pulls her close, clinging to her narrow shoulders as much as she clings to his. 

She’s still sobbing.

  
  
  


Padmè stops by. She’s late for a senate briefing, or something, he doesn’t care. What he cares is that it was _her_ , she went and got Obi-Wan and the Alderaanian senator from-

“Zigoola. It’s a… It was a Sith planet,” she says at last, very quietly. “Bail said something about a holocron. It crashed their ship. It was hurting him– Making him hurt himself.” 

Ahsoka is sleeping on the floor, curled up on the other side of the door. Anakin can’t bring himself to care as he buries his tears in Padmè’s smooth hair. 

He lets her hold him as he shakes. 

Obi-Wan is still _bleeding_ in the force. A steady red dripping. 

  
  
  


His oxygen levels drop two more times throughout the night, and each time Anakin can’t hear anything except a buzzing void inside his head, a chiming that rises and rises and rises, can’t see anything but smoke. The second time, once everything quiets down again, Vokara Che talks to him. 

“He is going to make it. We’re keeping him under for a while more, and we still do not know the extent of his… Psychological damage, but he is in no danger now.”

 _Holocron_. Anakin pictures it; some kind of ugly sith creation, twisted by the dark side. He feels its hum whenever he gets too close, a stench in the Force, something rotten clinging to him. He stares at Obi-Wan’s hollowed-out, brittle body. _What did it do to you?_

_What did it make you do to yourself?_

  
  
  


Anakin doesn’t remember how many days it’s been. It doesn’t matter. Master Che decided it would be best to attempt letting him wake up – deep healing trances are not meant to be so prolonged. Jedi are not meant to be this damaged. Nobody is.

So they ease him out. He sleeps lightly, no longer drifting deep in the currents of the Force. This close to the surface, Anakin can sense him. Can sense the inky fever of the Dark side flowing through his veins. 

  
  
  


When Obi-Wan wakes up, he’s screaming.

Anakin startles from from his staring at the night sky, his self-imposed vigil while Ahsoka catches some rest. It’s a sound he had no idea Obi-Wan could even make; a horrific trembling _wail_ that breaks into a moan of pain as Anakin rushes to his side to find him breathless and sobbing.

“Obi-Wan. _Obi-Wan_. I’m here, you’re safe now, are you okay? Can you hear me?”

Obi-Wan, shaking, _screaming_ , can not. It hits him like a blaster bolt to the gut. 

“Master,” he says, desperate, grasping for those bony hands, “Just hold on. Hold on.”

But Obi-Wan, wide-open eyes staring far past him, is somewhere else. His whole body tenses, face twisting, and he keeps crying out, straining against Anakin’s hard grip on his wrists. “Hold on,” he says, as Obi-Wan cries, and he bows his head, unsure of who exactly it is he’s speaking to. “Please. Hold on.”

Eventually, those gut-wrenching sobs die down. Obi-Wan falls back asleep moments before Vokara Che rushes in, taking vitals and asking Anakin too many questions too quickly. He doesn’t know what he answers. He keeps hearing Obi-Wan’s terrible screams. 

He doesn’t sleep. 

  
  
  


They don’t talk about Zigoola. It becomes an unspoken rule, an uncrossable line in the sand between them; Anakin never asks what it was Obi-Wan saw that awful night in the healing halls. He leaves the next morning for a mission. 

When they meet again, Obi-Wan is… Fine. 

He remains fine – the Obi-Wan Kenobi brand of fine. Fine that includes migraines nothing can dispel. Fine that includes sudden startles and hands that aren’t quite as steady. Fine that includes Anakin catching him leaning heavily against the wall, stemming the flow of blood from his nose with his tunic sleeve. Fine that includes a new tightness to his shoulders, and a new friend in the Senate. Obi-Wan is _fine_.

Some things you just can’t speak about.


End file.
